How to Backup Your Entire WordPress Website – Guide with Pics

Backup is one of the most important pillars of a WordPress site/blog. Suppose something wrong happened to your site and you are unable to find the root causes or your whole site got vulnerable. Then the quickest and easiest way is to restore the backup that you have created. Creating a backup of WordPress site is very easy. Times are gone when you have to do all the things manually. Now you just need to hit a click, and that’s all.

Many hosting providers include free backup creation and restoration services in the plans, but you must double check their policy. Like with InMotion you can restore the backup only once during four months duration. In the case of SiteGround, they only create 1 copy and you have to make a request whenever you want to restore. These are fantastic hosting providers; we don’t just neglect their services just because of the backup limitations.

So the solution is to create a complete site backup of your WordPress site by installing a simple plugin where you don’t need any technical skills. It is a super easy procedure to make the backup through a plugin. Updraftplus is the best free and trusted plugin to save your work.

How to Make the WordPress Site/Blog Complete Backup Instantly – Updraftplus

Updraftplus

Updraftplus is the free plugin which allows you to create the backup for free and support multiple remote locations where you store the backup files like Google drive and Dropbox etc. You can either make the backup of the whole WordPress website or the selected files like themes, database, plugins, etc. And similarly, when you want to restore then you can also choose which file to restore or the whole site.

Steps to make the backup of WordPress site:

  • Login to your WordPress dashboard and navigate to “Plugins” given at the sidebar and then click on “Add new”.

how to add new pluguin in wordpress

  • Search for “updraftplus” and install the plugin
  • After installing the plugin, it will ask you to “Activate”.

installing and activating updraftplus plugin

Now you need to do some necessary settings. Don’t worry Just follow the bellow steps

  • At the sidebar of the WordPress dashboard hover your mouse pointer over the “Settings” and then click on the “UpdraftPlus Backups”.

how to access updraftplus settings

 

  1. After clicking, the setting panel of the plugin will come in front of you. Now click on the “Settings” See the below image
  2. In setting tab, you need to configure the files and databases schedule as well as the number of copies of the backup. You can select after how may time the backup should be created.
  3. Here you can also choose the number of copies of each backup should be retained. Below we pick a weekly backup schedule and 2 copies of each backup.

wordpress site backup schedule

  • After that in the setting tab, the next step is to give the remote location where you want to store the backup files. Here in this guide, we will explain the procedure for “dropbox”. Because it’s super-duper easy and a newbie can easily integrate it. Just select “Dropbox” for now, and we configure its setting later. Here look at the remote location choices that are available in the plugin.

dropbox for saving backup

  1. Now further scroll down and select all the files if you want to make the backup of your whole WordPress site. You can also make the backup of particular things like themes, plugins, and databases, etc.
  2. Also, tick the Email box for receiving the reports related to backups.
  3. Put your email address on which you want to receive the reports.
  4. At the end hit the “Save Changes”.

wordpress complete site backup setting

After saving the changes now, you need to link the remote location with the plugin. Here see how to connect Dropbox to save the backup files and then download those files to your local drive if you want to.

How to connect Dropbox to store WordPress site backup files using Updraftplus:

  • Click on the link provided in the popup which shows right after saving the changes or Scrolls up and Click on the link as shown in the figure given below or

link updraft with dropbox cloud storage

  • After clicking, the Dropbox website page will open asking for “login”. If you don’t have the account, then create a new one.
  • After logging in a message appear asking for access. Now click “allow” and then complete setup.
  • When you click on “Complete Setup” then it will automatically direct back to your Updraftplus panel. Click on the “Backup Now” to make the WordPress site backup. Normally it will automatically start creating a complete backup of the website.
  • If you want to make backup of some specific files then click on “Backup Now” in the “Current Status” tab. A box will appear to choose the files. Suppose we want to create the backup of database and plugins then tick only those boxes. Here see the below image

choose files for customize wordpress site backup

 

  • In the “Current Status” tab of Updraftplus, you can see the backup progress. That’s all you have successfully created the site backup.

How to Save WordPress Site Backup to Local Drive

If you want to save the backup files on your computer hard drive then just download the folder from the Dropbox. It is always advisable to store the files in more than one places to ensure more safety.

  • Login to your Dropbox account
  • Select the folder and then click on download.

download wordpress site backup to your local drive

How to restore the backup files:

When the backup completed your site contents are pretty much secure. If something wrong happened and your site got crash then you need to restore it immediately. Because if you did not do so, then there is a chance that you will lost the number of visitors during that period.

  • For restoration click on the “Existing Backups” and then click on the “Restore”.

how to restore wordpress blog backup

  • A box will show to select the files which you want to restore. Just tick all the boxes if you want to restore all the things.

So this is how you can create a complete backup of WordPress website/blog and how to restore? In case if you still have some issues in making the backup of your site then don’t hesitate to ask for help. It will be our pleasure to help you.

Imran Nazish
 

Imran is an enthusiastic web hosting and server management geek with over 8 years of experience dealing with different kinds of hosting companies. He is also familiar with web hosting technical stuff and server optimizations and shares thorough, well-tested reviews and guides on the same domain.

Click Here to Leave a Comment Below 0 comments

Leave a Reply: